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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 21:54:15 GMT
We've got pretty good train and tram services in West Midlands county. I use my bus pass for that if I want to go to town, or even Worcester, Stratford etc sometimes. You have to pay a bit if you go outside the county boundary. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 21:54:32 GMT
The major issue with no longer supported OS's is security unless you don't want to use the internet. Online banking on Windows 7? The plus point is the fewer people use it, the less criminals will go to the trouble of trying to find weakness with its security. You can of course use up to date antivirus programs still. And web browsers. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 21:55:15 GMT
Well the criminals needed time to make use of it.... |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2023 21:59:26 GMT
We've got pretty good train and tram services in West Midlands county. I use my bus pass for that if I want to go to town, or even Worcester, Stratford etc sometimes. You have to pay a bit if you go outside the county boundary. You’re allowed outside the county boundary?!?!? |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 22:05:01 GMT
there’s quite often another tunnel after the light anyway. (A cheery thought for the day) Very true, certainly on the Worcester-Birmingham canal. Tardebigge, Shortwood and Wasthills tunnels all within about five miles of each other. Wasthills tunnel, some 1.25 miles long, is the third longest on the British canal system. It travels under Birmingham City FC's training ground. As I glide through the tunnel in a narrow boat, in almost total darkness, I sing Villa songs throughout the 25 minutes it takes to get through. Is that the one in Kings Norton? We used to call it the 'two-mile tunnel'. A bit of legendary exaggeration perhaps. |
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Post by crossbat11 on Aug 8, 2023 22:05:28 GMT
We've got pretty good train and tram services in West Midlands county. I use my bus pass for that if I want to go to town, or even Worcester, Stratford etc sometimes. You have to pay a bit if you go outside the county boundary. You’re allowed outside the county boundary?!?!? Only if supervised, I think Mercian once told me |
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Post by crossbat11 on Aug 8, 2023 22:06:54 GMT
Very true, certainly on the Worcester-Birmingham canal. Tardebigge, Shortwood and Wasthills tunnels all within about five miles of each other. Wasthills tunnel, some 1.25 miles long, is the third longest on the British canal system. It travels under Birmingham City FC's training ground. As I glide through the tunnel in a narrow boat, in almost total darkness, I sing Villa songs throughout the 25 minutes it takes to get through. Is that the one in Kings Norton? We used to call it the 'two-mile tunnel'. A bit of legendary exaggeration perhaps. I tend to exaggerate in inches rather than miles! EDIT: The Wasthills Tunnel is in fact 1.55 miles long. I was a quarter of a mile out. I could have claimed a typo, but I was in fact labouring under an illusion all along!! |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 22:11:23 GMT
"Public Health England estimates that alcohol costs the UK at least £27 billion a year. Over the past five years, alcohol duty has raised just £10.5-£12.1 billion annually. This is simply not enough to cover the cost of the damage alcohol causes." ahauk.org/what-we-do/our-priorities/alcohol-duty-reform/ I notice the website only talks about alcohol duty. One shouldnt forget the 20% VAT. Presumably if alcohol was banned, people would drink something else, but a lot cheaper and not pint for pint. Most of the VAT would be lost and thats more than another 20% because it is levied on the shop price including duty and manufacturing costs, proft, etc. Part of the argument about the cost of tobacco was also how you allow for savings to the public from people who die early. Someone dying at 65 from tobacco or alcohol related diseases, saves the state pension or benefits for all those years early that they died. This is not being accounted for. As with other diseases, if you prevent someone dying from one disease, they are not then cured forever but continue aging, claiming benefits, until they finally succumb to something else. You must therefore also add in the costs to the NHS of all these alcohol survivors, who still go on to get something else for which treatment must be paid for until they die from it. You might have saved the cost of treatment for alcohol related disease, but you must add on the cost of treatment for altzheimers or cancer instead. Quite possibly for years of treatment for different diseases.
So another stab at a better calculation?
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 22:13:12 GMT
These things were disapproved of, but not illegal I think. Also bargees used to grow marijuana along canal banks, Laudanum was a big one for the Victorians - used as a painkiller, widely available, opium based and highly addictive. Just had a thought - I wonder if that explains Batty? |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2023 22:13:38 GMT
You’re allowed outside the county boundary?!?!? Only if supervised, I think Mercian once told me No wonder he has to “pay a bit”. I’m not one to snitch on people but I think we should let the authorities know about this. You speak the language - can you tell them? |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 22:21:35 GMT
crossbat11"I don't know if the book you're reading covers this, but I've always wondered that while Thatcherism was electorally very successful for the Tories in the short term, whether it also sowed the seeds of their subsequent electoral weakness. Put another way, was this the era when younger voters started to slowly reject Toryism and the party became increasingly dependent on the older age groups for support?" You're probably right about the age thing (though you wouldn't think it from this site with all the old buffer lefties 😁). However I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that winning 5 of the 8 GEs since Thatch is a sign of electoral weakness, even if it's likely to be 5 out of 9 pretty soon.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 22:23:54 GMT
It would be entirely justified for someone to criticise the Qatar govt* but not generalise about ALL Qatari or muslim people. Hmm, but surely then you are generalising about all members of the Qatar government? Committing the same error, just on a smaller scale? And isnt that a bit like saying all conservatives believe Johnson must stay as PM, because that is what they all did say? And yet here we are, they threw him out. So should we lump them all together as Johnson supporters or enemies? Collective responsibility where no one says what they actually believe but follow the party line? |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 22:26:12 GMT
I'm trying to let this drop in the interests of harmony, but can you quote something I wrote that did that? If you can I'll look at it again. Doing that would involve a long and boring post. Lets leave it for the moment and if the occasion arises again I'll post something. I must say you would have been an interesting person to have on all the various mandatory equality and diversity training we public sector types are obliged to do.  I worked in the NHS at the end of my so-called career, so I did have to endure all that cr*p. 🤣 As well as stuff like 'Manual Handling' when all I ever lifted was a computer mouse. Complete waste of time. There was one amusing anecdote came out of it, but I'm aware I'm already making too many posts. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 22:26:40 GMT
Earlier on this thread it was suggested that you are on the autism spectrum. Being pedantic, everyone is on the spectrum. Thats why its called a spectrum, from none to max. Although I suspect maybe it should be a multidimensional collection of traits rather than one linear measurement. |
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 22:29:54 GMT
Being a humanity vacuum comes at a price . In this case it was around £1500 "Painting over murals for children at asylum centre cost Home Office £1,550 The Home Office spent more than £1,500 of public money painting over cartoon murals that were meant to welcome children to a controversial asylum reception centre, Rajeev Syal reports." presumably that comes out of the foreign aid budget? |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 22:41:20 GMT
In 20 years time, when there will likely be plenty of EVs on the secondhand market that will do mileage per charge that most will require, it won't be a problem, but, right now, that is not the case....and those that are will command a 'premium second hand price'. As well as greatly increasing the charging infrastructure, the next government will also need - that's NEED - to introduce a very generous scrappage scheme to help people switch. I understand that existing petrol cars will not be banned in 2030 (yet!), so I predict a massive boom for firms who can keep old bangers roadworthy for longer. |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 22:47:38 GMT
] As others have suggested it seems to me that voters are not anti-green policies as such but they are anti-paying for them. This applies to ULEZ as well. I think we will only be able to 'go green' by avoiding direct charges to individuals and funding the whole thing through taxation, so people pay indirectly and therefore don't notice as much. Which means higher general taxation and no hypothecated green taxes on the public (you could still on polluting businesses). Not an ideal scenario. Yes, this, for me, is spot on! In terms of whether it's through ringenced 'green taxes' or through general taxation, I prefer the latter in most cases. People generally like green stuff, so, whether that be more offshore wind and tidal energy, or the increased charging infrastructure for EVs, for the most part, voters will be happy to see such things. 'Green taxes', particularly on individuals, while sending out the message that we are clear / care about green stuff, also reminds people that they are paying for it far more than general taxation would. Taxing aviation fuel like car fuel would be an obvious starting point. |
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 22:58:11 GMT
Only Danny deserves the waterboarding. Really? Why? Because there is very good evidence Hastings had covid in 2019, well before it was supposed to have arrived in the UK....and no one noticed? Which implies it was NEVER as dangerous as the worst case scenario used by SAGE to justify the curtailment of civil liberties it then proposed? 1) I personally had a disease which at the time I believed to be the worst flu I ever had about November 2019. It had what we now recognise as the classic uniquely identifying symptoms of covid including loss of taste and smell. (zoe reckoned in 2020 that these symptoms were a 95% certain identification of a case) 2) At least one and possibly two people becoming similarly ill through close contacts of this outbreak were admitted to hospital, where one died. (might be more, this is just two I know of). The hospital was unable to identify the illness, so it wasnt something then known. General spread of severity as per covid, no problem for kids but fatal for some of the oldest. The second person with suspected covid never thereafter developed covid despite being exposed to it in hospital again at the end of the year suggesting they were immune already. 3) There was a wave of deaths in care homes in Hastings that winter, but not so great as to cause alarm. Others I spoke to later reported having had this disease. 4) The first case was someone who arrived in the UK from Wuhan, already infected with whatever it was. I probably caught it just one step away. 5) The entire local region failed to get any significant outbreak of covid spring 2020. The most obvious reason why this would be, was if it had already had covid that winter. 6) In the autumn Hastings caught the kent wave of covid just like the rest of the country. Again this suggest the reason why it did not catch it in the spring was something very specific to the first strain, ie already having had it. 7) Based on my own conclusions, I never had any vaccinations. Spring 2022 I had a mild cold type disease which on testing was positive for covid. So.. either this 60 year old found covid to be a negligible disease and no reason anyone would worry about it at all, or I had already had the actual disease back in 2019, so when I got it again it was pretty mild. This doesnt rule out being repeatedly infected with different or the same strains in between and never even noticing. (that must by now be the most common outcome of an infection) 8) I did an antibody test spring 2021. This came back 0.03 on a scale from 0.0001 to maybe 1000, with 1 being the accepted point for having sufficient antibody to not get sick. The test company stated that while the manufacture made no claims about whether their test proved someone had had covid, it was suggested that a result of 0.1 meant most likely the person had had covid. So where did that leave me? About exactly where you might expect some 18 months after an infection. |
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oldnat
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Extremist - Undermining the UK state and its institutions
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Post by oldnat on Aug 8, 2023 23:01:21 GMT
"Public Health England estimates that alcohol costs the UK at least £27 billion a year. Over the past five years, alcohol duty has raised just £10.5-£12.1 billion annually. This is simply not enough to cover the cost of the damage alcohol causes." ahauk.org/what-we-do/our-priorities/alcohol-duty-reform/ I notice the website only talks about alcohol duty. One shouldnt forget the 20% VAT. Presumably if alcohol was banned, people would drink something else, but a lot cheaper and not pint for pint. Most of the VAT would be lost and thats more than another 20% because it is levied on the shop price including duty and manufacturing costs, proft, etc. Part of the argument about the cost of tobacco was also how you allow for savings to the public from people who die early. Someone dying at 65 from tobacco or alcohol related diseases, saves the state pension or benefits for all those years early that they died. This is not being accounted for. As with other diseases, if you prevent someone dying from one disease, they are not then cured forever but continue aging, claiming benefits, until they finally succumb to something else. You must therefore also add in the costs to the NHS of all these alcohol survivors, who still go on to get something else for which treatment must be paid for until they die from it. You might have saved the cost of treatment for alcohol related disease, but you must add on the cost of treatment for altzheimers or cancer instead. Quite possibly for years of treatment for different diseases.
So another stab at a better calculation?
But you make a fair point. The maximum financial benefit to government would be to cease health care provision entirely. That way, only the fittest would survive - but only for as long as they were economically productive. I have previously pointed out that cups of hemlock (provided by the NHS, of course) for the aged would save the young a lot of expense - though their views might change with time! |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 23:05:18 GMT
"Asked on LBC if Anderson was speaking on behalf of the party, Chalk defended what he said, arguing that his Tory colleague was expressing the “righteous indignation of the British people”. This seems like one of those examples I was referring to of ascribing particular views to too wide a group. It seems Chalk believes that the "British people" feel "righteous indignation" about migrants; so all 65m of them presumably. I rather doubt there is a unanimous view on that. Personally I feel righteous indignation that Lee Anderson is an MP and deputy leader of the Conservative Party rather than ranting in the corner of a pub somewhere and being avoided by the other customers, which seems like his natural home. I feel extremely strong 'righteous indignation' against the british people who feel 'righteous indignation' of the sort espoused by Anderson. I feel extreme 'righteous indignation' that I live in a country governed by a party and government that panders to cretins like Anderson. My uncle who died at 13 was a cretin because of my grandmother's iodine deficiency during pregnancy. "First recorded in 1770–80; from French crétin, originally from French Alpine dialect creitin, crestin “deformed and mentally defective dwarf” (owing to iodine deficiency in Alpine regions);" I take great offence. 🙄🤣 |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 23:05:45 GMT
There is/was no need to mention Danny . He is entitled to his opinion and it is for each person to decide if they wish to ignore him or engage with him - same for every other person on this site. Do I get all this attention because I make a point of never using abusive language against other posters? Whereas some do so as a matter of routine. The reason seems to be to incite anger in the other poster, make them lose sight of the thread of their argument, get so angry they abandon the website and stop posting, or hopefully respond in kind and get banned themselves. So such people play a game of using provocative language in the hope of getting rid of a debate they cannot counter with facts or logic by other means.
Its a common tactic amongst politicians, though one shouldnt necessarily assume that people using it are therefore professional politicians themselves. But we should all remember that some people are professionally paid to spread political propaganda on any website they can. Wikipedia even managed to trace some attempts to alter their pages back to registered offices of political parties. Most will presumably have learnt that lesson by now.
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 23:25:43 GMT
@steviebell I really don't want to pursue this, as it must be annoying for Mark apart from anything else. I will just say that your deductions about me and my history are incorrect and that there are Muslim sects such as Salafism and Wahhabism which are international in scope and have some beliefs and practices which antithetical to western civilisation. To pretend otherwise is self-delusion in the name of liberalism(?) which verges on the suicidal. This does not mean I hate all brown people or any such nonsense any more than domjg hates all cretins because he used it as a term of abuse. Can we just leave it at that? |
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Post by lens on Aug 8, 2023 23:29:10 GMT
My knowledge of cars is exceptionally basic! So can someone explain why batteries seem to be the preferred system for electric cars rather than hydrogen fuel cells?
Is this just a Betamax v VHS controversy?
Since hydrogen production requires little more than off peak renewable electricity (instead of turning the turbines off, and paying compensation!) and water, it would seem relatively easy to convert fossil fuel filling stations to hydrogen ones.
I seek enlightenment. Well! Where to start....... I've already posted about this in the special interest thread, but as you ask....... The idea of hydrogen for cars goes back 30 years or more when the imperative was to clean up exhausts, much less concern about carbon dioxide emissions. And realistically, then there didn't seem much practical alternative. Trouble is, nearly all hydrogen is still produced from fossil fuels, with consequent carbon release, and whilst it is possible to make it via electrolysis from water that is still much more expensive. And in the last decade or two battery price and performance has improved so dramatically that they have become a very practical alternative to hydrogen. Practically, a big objection to hydrogen for cars is energy inefficiency. If it is to be made in a green manner there are losses at the various stages of hydrogen production, dispensing and use in a fuel cell such that for every kWh originally, only about 30% or so gets delivered to the wheels. With a battery it's more like 90-95%. Like for like, you need to start off with about 3x as much electricity going the green hydrogen route vis a vis battery. Regarding the point about using off peak renewable, the problem is that such requires having electrolysis equipment standing by - idle most of the time - ready for the relatively short periods of such peaks. It indeed would mean better utilisation of such as a windfarm - but at the cost of very poor utilisation of electrolysis plant, and the capital going into that. And frankly there are better ways of achieving a grid balance, such as more grid storage and smart metering. (Encouraging by price electricity consumption at times of otherwise low usage - and overnight car battery charging is a good way to achieve such.) And to "seem relatively easy to convert fossil fuel filling stations to hydrogen ones", then sorry, but no. Such exist - but each pump is way more expensive, and those that do exist only do so because of grants for trials. What current hydrogen fuel cell cars that do exist rely on storing the hydrogen in pressure vessels at 700bar. That is some **3.5x** the pressure in a standard scuba diving cylinder! Compressing to such a level and dispensing is far, far from trivial and the Californian experience is one of high unreliability and frequent breakdowns of stations. Over there, Toyota sells the Mirai, but to sell any at all they have to subsidise not just the car itself but give a "free" card worth $15,000 of hydrogen to anyone who buys one. Toyota make a huge loss on every Mirai sold - and even then don't sell very many. To give even more idea, they even give the $15,000 credit if you buy a used Mirai, and there are even tales of the cars being sold for $11,000 - but with $15,000 of free fuel! For ssome years the talk has been of the hydrogen price coming down from about $15/kg dispensed to a hoped for $5/kg. In fact, current Californian prices are more like $30/kg. FCEV advocates like to point to speedier refuelling as an advantage, which to an extent can be true. As long as nobody has been to the pump just before you and the buffer pressure has fallen, in which case a full 700 bar fill will take a great deal longer. Compression of hydrogen to 700 bar is a far from trivial matter and requires an expensive compressor and regular maintenance. There are also tales of the stations behaving badly in very hot or cold weather, including problems with nozzles freezing to the car inlets. It's also worth mentioning getting the hydrogen to such a filling station. Currently, tanker deliveries of petrol/diesel are one thing - for hydrogen it's not so simple because most of the tanker weight gets taken up by the weight of the pressure vessel rather than fuel itself. Like for like, to service a given number of car miles, reckon on needing something like 10-15x as many tanker deliveries as for petrol/diesel! Yes, really. And such as this was gone into about 20 years ago with the Bossel-Elliason report, and the fundamental physics has not changed And of course, no possibility of "refuelling" at home. With a battery car, if you can install a home charge point, most refuelling consists of just a few seconds plugging in when necessary and forgetting it until unplugging the next morning. Leave home every day with a "full tank" if you wish. You may well ask with all these (and more) problems with fuel cell cars, then why is anybody still bothering? And probably it comes down to the sunk cost fallacy in many cases. Companies have vested interests, switching to batteries would cost too much money and they are aware they are years behind the competition so a case of trying to make it work. But even Toyota, one of the leading advocates for fuel cells for cars is starting to announce extensive battery plans. It remains to be seen if they will still carry on promoting fuel cell cars, especially considering just how much money they are losing on every one sold. And you mention VHS v Betamax. The relevance is that the competition held up sales of *BOTH* for a period, and the same with BluRay v HD-DVD. Some argue that there is room for both BEV and FCEVs, but the danger is that - as with VHS/Betamax - such an approach will just delay the whole move to zero emission vehicles. Building out a nationwide charging *OR* hydrogen fuelling network is a huge and very costly exercise - but trying to build out both in parallel is just totally unfeasible. And there is a lot more that could be said, but this is long enough already. But has it gone even a little way to giving some of the enlightenment you seek? |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 23:30:19 GMT
YG have various new polls on the immigration issue: I wonder how many of the 28% saying the barges were unacceptable were saying that because they thought they were too luxurious or that the illegal immigrants should have been instantly deported? |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 23:34:28 GMT
Being a humanity vacuum comes at a price . In this case it was around £1500 "Painting over murals for children at asylum centre cost Home Office £1,550 The Home Office spent more than £1,500 of public money painting over cartoon murals that were meant to welcome children to a controversial asylum reception centre, Rajeev Syal reports." Cool! I'll do the next one for £1500! 😁 |
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Post by eor on Aug 8, 2023 23:42:39 GMT
Hastings was in the EU for years before Maastricht and no-one noticed. Do try to keep up! A flippancy that implies a lack of concern for what we've lost which I find puzzling as you're one of the younger people here. I believe you have a young child. Are you happy for them to be limited to a British passport and not enjoy the benefits we did? My daughter has an Irish passport and if she didn't have that option I'd be enraged. Maybe kids in years to come can do a year abroad in Northern Ireland instead of Italy or Germany? Actually Britain has been in some kind of single market with other European countries since joining EFTA in 1960. That is the scale of the reckless rupture brexit represents. A flippancy that was richly invited by the form of words used in the specific post I was responding to. Nothing deeper than that. |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 23:43:07 GMT
But, hey, ignorance on here is no bar to criticism of others. That's certainly true. 🤣 |
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Post by mercian on Aug 8, 2023 23:45:51 GMT
Sorry, but what you wrote was ambiguous: I was hoping that someone who knows more about cars would have replied to this, but as no one has...implies that you haven't received any replies from someone who knows more about cars than you do. I accept that you didn't mean it that way. God people on this site are sensitive. It is quite obvious what athena meant. Not to talk about the endless pearl clutching about mercian ' s comments, who is a perfectly reasonable poster, even if he doesn't fulfil some people's ideas about correct terminology. This isn't Twitter/X. Lighten up. Only Danny deserves the waterboarding. Thank you. 👍 I do try to be. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Aug 8, 2023 23:52:41 GMT
Practically, a big objection to hydrogen for cars is energy inefficiency. If it is to be made in a green manner there are losses at the various stages of hydrogen production, dispensing and use in a fuel cell such that for every kWh originally, only about 30% or so gets delivered to the wheels. With a battery it's more like 90-95%. Like for like, you need to start off with about 3x as much electricity going the green hydrogen route vis a vis battery. This seems approximately comparable to the inefficiencies in converting gas into electrical power. But no one seems to have built any on a practical scale? If this happens, then the Uk will already have a national network of pipes delivering hydrogen gas to every home. So perhaps what you need is not tankers, but local compressors attached to the local low pressure gas distribution network, which already exists. If compressors could be designed small and cheap enough, again yes the domestic gas supply currently exists. I agree. However to come back to your earlier point, the key question seems to be how you make renewables reliable. And that requires you to store enough energy for the worst case wrong weather. Until this is really solved by actual working plant, then we dont know whether ultimately we will be forced to retain a hydrogen gas storage and distribution network anyway. |
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oldnat
Member
Extremist - Undermining the UK state and its institutions
Posts: 6,131
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Post by oldnat on Aug 8, 2023 23:54:51 GMT
Well! Where to start....... I've already posted about this in the special interest thread, but as you ask....... The idea of hydrogen for cars goes back 30 years or more when the imperative was to clean up exhausts, much less concern about carbon dioxide emissions. And realistically, then there didn't seem much practical alternative. Trouble is, nearly all hydrogen is still produced from fossil fuels, with consequent carbon release, and whilst it is possible to make it via electrolysis from water that is still much more expensive. And in the last decade or two battery price and performance has improved so dramatically that they have become a very practical alternative to hydrogen. Practically, a big objection to hydrogen for cars is energy inefficiency. If it is to be made in a green manner there are losses at the various stages of hydrogen production, dispensing and use in a fuel cell such that for every kWh originally, only about 30% or so gets delivered to the wheels. With a battery it's more like 90-95%. Like for like, you need to start off with about 3x as much electricity going the green hydrogen route vis a vis battery. Regarding the point about using off peak renewable, the problem is that such requires having electrolysis equipment standing by - idle most of the time - ready for the relatively short periods of such peaks. It indeed would mean better utilisation of such as a windfarm - but at the cost of very poor utilisation of electrolysis plant, and the capital going into that. And frankly there are better ways of achieving a grid balance, such as more grid storage and smart metering. (Encouraging by price electricity consumption at times of otherwise low usage - and overnight car battery charging is a good way to achieve such.) And to "seem relatively easy to convert fossil fuel filling stations to hydrogen ones", then sorry, but no. Such exist - but each pump is way more expensive, and those that do exist only do so because of grants for trials. What current hydrogen fuel cell cars that do exist rely on storing the hydrogen in pressure vessels at 700bar. That is some **3.5x** the pressure in a standard scuba diving cylinder! Compressing to such a level and dispensing is far, far from trivial and the Californian experience is one of high unreliability and frequent breakdowns of stations. Over there, Toyota sells the Mirai, but to sell any at all they have to subsidise not just the car itself but give a "free" card worth $15,000 of hydrogen to anyone who buys one. Toyota make a huge loss on every Mirai sold - and even then don't sell very many. To give even more idea, they even give the $15,000 credit if you buy a used Mirai, and there are even tales of the cars being sold for $11,000 - but with $15,000 of free fuel! For ssome years the talk has been of the hydrogen price coming down from about $15/kg dispensed to a hoped for $5/kg. In fact, current Californian prices are more like $30/kg. FCEV advocates like to point to speedier refuelling as an advantage, which to an extent can be true. As long as nobody has been to the pump just before you and the buffer pressure has fallen, in which case a full 700 bar fill will take a great deal longer. Compression of hydrogen to 700 bar is a far from trivial matter and requires an expensive compressor and regular maintenance. There are also tales of the stations behaving badly in very hot or cold weather, including problems with nozzles freezing to the car inlets. It's also worth mentioning getting the hydrogen to such a filling station. Currently, tanker deliveries of petrol/diesel are one thing - for hydrogen it's not so simple because most of the tanker weight gets taken up by the weight of the pressure vessel rather than fuel itself. Like for like, to service a given number of car miles, reckon on needing something like 10-15x as many tanker deliveries as for petrol/diesel! Yes, really. And such as this was gone into about 20 years ago with the Bossel-Elliason report, and the fundamental physics has not changed And of course, no possibility of "refuelling" at home. With a battery car, if you can install a home charge point, most refuelling consists of just a few seconds plugging in when necessary and forgetting it until unplugging the next morning. Leave home every day with a "full tank" if you wish. You may well ask with all these (and more) problems with fuel cell cars, then why is anybody still bothering? And probably it comes down to the sunk cost fallacy in many cases. Companies have vested interests, switching to batteries would cost too much money and they are aware they are years behind the competition so a case of trying to make it work. But even Toyota, one of the leading advocates for fuel cells for cars is starting to announce extensive battery plans. It remains to be seen if they will still carry on promoting fuel cell cars, especially considering just how much money they are losing on every one sold. And you mention VHS v Betamax. The relevance is that the competition held up sales of *BOTH* for a period, and the same with BluRay v HD-DVD. Some argue that there is room for both BEV and FCEVs, but the danger is that - as with VHS/Betamax - such an approach will just delay the whole move to zero emission vehicles. Building out a nationwide charging *OR* hydrogen fuelling network is a huge and very costly exercise - but trying to build out both in parallel is just totally unfeasible. And there is a lot more that could be said, but this is long enough already. But has it gone even a little way to giving some of the enlightenment you seek?
I'm with you on improved grid storage. That Downing St still hasn't signalled the UK energy policy, to the companies with shovel ready hydro storage schemes, to allow them to go ahead at zero cost to the public purse is "regrettable" - but unsurprising. |
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